Press and daily Dakotaian. (Yankton, Dakota Territory [S.D.]) 1880-1889, 1887-04-05
JENNY JUNE.
She Wonders If Education Teaches Us
Anything AftersAIl. !.

IL w tuueTs II I-Iuf1Uipu bt1GHeS Us
Anything After All. 4
Special Correspondence
New YoRS, March 14.-Dtoes education
teach US a%nythings / begin to doubt it, and
| think it would at any rate be a fair question
for a debating society. Men and women learn
all sorts of things nowadays, but they do not
seem to think of applying what they have
learned, or at least what they have been
taught, to the circumstances of every day life.
We study equations and the calculus, but we
not learned to number our houses SO
that they can be seen, even in broad daylight.
We talk about ventilation, but we shut our
selves up in furnace heated houses or stove
heated rooms, cement cracks CT crevices that
admit a breath of fresh air, and discuss the
latest scientific developments in sanitation in
rooms that are filed with atmospheric
malaria Our street cars and public buildings
have still no means of changing the air or adj
hitting it from outside but by opening win
dows and making u ~draught, which is death
to nervous and sensitive people.
The Nineteenth Century club of New York,
the latest exponent and collective represen-
tative of modern thought and culture, asks
for evening dress,n upon its cards of
Invitation, from women, to whom evening
vi % iGStil NoO ' W loH llCIASA
and nc sleeves at all. This in a public art
gallery where the meetings are held, which
will hold 700 or 500 people, and where the
only means of ventilation which has ever
been tried sthat of laboriously and with much
noise opening great sliding windows, which
pour in a perfect blast, and are then as labo-i-
ously ground back into place, and the room
again made a Theoretically sealed can. 1t is
said that one lady is dying of pneumonia
from these severe alterations, but more, one
would suppose, would die of asphyxia.
1t is curious, but there is a great deal
of fact in imagination. l never go into a
street car that 1 do not find its atmos.
phere SO bad that / want to get out
of u as quickly as possible. There
are ventilators, but not one is ever
opened. Twice every day say to a con-
ductor: sPlease open some of those ventilators.
the air in this car is poisonous He perhaps
opens one, OF tw~o-generally on the same
side-with a jerk, and some rheumatic person
glares at, me, but l feel happy, all the same,
for / know the air of that car will be better
when ] leave it than when / entered it. The
work of the imagination is seen in the con-
viction of the rheumatic individual that he is
suffering from that publication of the air.
If he had not seen it, if a certain amount OF
ventilation was effected as q matter Of course,
he would simplyfeel the beneficial effect of it
and not dream of injury; but it is the revolu.
%tionary aspect, the sight of fresh air, which
frightens him.
1t is hardly to be believed how many people
still sleep with their windows closed tightly,
and rendered even more deadly with weather
strips. They may read all the books on
sanitary science, attend courses of lectures on
hygiene, know Professor Huxley by heart
it does not make a particle of difference, they
stick to their habits and their traditions, in
spite of what they know.
If we are to look for education and its re-
suits anywhere outside academy walls, ii
should be in such well dressed and refined
looking assemblages of people as are seen at
the Metropolitan opera house and the best
theatres Yet the Interruptions. the parade,
the talking, the laughter. interpolated upon
the performance by ignorant idiots, who have
not brains enough to understand the artistic
interest or sense to appreciate the rights @.
others, are daily subjects of complaint, and
have become a real dread. to those who 90
buke which came from Miss Genevieve Ward
to a theatre party who occupied a stage boz
during her engagement an .sn&as.iud elphia
shows that other cities besides New York are
afflicted with this class of iIiteracy. Great
artists, accustomed to respectful treatment,
and absorbed in their work, are startled from
it as by a shock, or confused by the giggling
and Irrelevant sounds which nave nothing to
do with the work in hand. Miss Ward
stopped her speech while such an unseemly
exhibition and disturbance was in progress,
and, addressing herself to the delinauents,
said sweetly: II am really afraid we are die
turbing you. Shall we go ong' A few such
lessons might teach even ignorance itself
something; but few artists have the presence
of mind of this highly trained and expert.
enced actress. JENNY JUNE.